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To: weikel
Rousseau was a moron the Jacobin tyrants were inspired by him.

I agree. Read this from the man who was really the philosophical father of Marxism...

Jean-Jacques Rousseau in A Discourse on the Arts and Sciences:

An ancient tradition passed out of Egypt into Greece, that some god, who was an enemy to the repose of mankind, was the inventor of the sciences. What must the Egyptians, among whom the sciences first arose, have thought of them? And they beheld, near at hand, the sources from which they sprang. In fact, whether we turn to the annals of the world, or eke out with philosophical investigations the uncertain chronicles of history, we shall not find for human knowledge an origin answering to the idea we are pleased to entertain of it at present. Astronomy was born of superstition, eloquence of ambition, hatred, falsehood, and flattery; geometry of avarice; physics of an idle curiosity; all, even moral philosophy, of human pride. Thus the arts and sciences owe their birth to our vices; we should be less doubtful of their advantages, if they had sprung from our virtues. (Rousseau, p 15)

The philosophies of Rousseau and Thomas Hobbes are not generally considered analogous. Rousseau is actually very hostile to Hobbes, calling him ‘pernicious’ in A Discourse on the Arts and Sciences:

…Paganism, though given over to all the extravagances of human reason, has left nothing to compare with the shameful monuments which have been prepared by the art of printing, during the reign of the gospel. The impious writings of Leucippus and Diagoras perished with their authors. The world, in their days, was ignorant of the art of immortalizing the errors and extravagances of the human mind. But thanks to the art of printing* and the use we make of it, the pernicious reflections of Hobbes and Spinoza will last forever. Go, famous writings, of which the ignorance and rusticity of our forefathers would have been incapable. Go to our descendants, along with those still more pernicious works which reek of the corrupted manners the present age! Let them together convey to posterity a faithful history of the progress and advantages of our arts and sciences. If they are read, they will not leave a doubt about the question we are now discussing, and unless mankind should then be still more foolish than we, they will lift up their hands to Heaven and exclaim in bitterness of heart: ‘Almighty God! Thou who holdest in Thy hand the minds of men, deliver us from the fatal arts and sciences of our forefathers; give us back the ignorance, innocence, and poverty, which alone can make us happy and are precious in Thy sight.’ (Rousseau, p 26-27)

* If we consider the frightful disorder which printing has already caused in Europe, and judge of the future by the progress of its evils from day to day, it is easy to foresee that sovereigns will hereafter take as much pains to banish this dreadful art from their dominions, as they ever took to encourage it. The Sultan Achmet, yielding to the opportunities of certain pretenders to taste, consented to have a press erected at Constantinople; but it was hardly set to work before they were obliged to destroy it, and throw the plant into a well.

It is related that the Caliph Omar, being asked what should be done with the Library at Alexandria, answered in these words: ‘If the books in the library contain anything contrary to the Alcoran, they are evil and ought to be burnt; if they contain only what the Alcoran teaches, they are superflous.’ This reasoning has been cited by our men of letters as the height of absurdity; but if Gregory the Great had been in place of Omar and the Gospel in the place of the Alcoran, the library would still have been burnt, and it would have been perhaps the finest action of his life.

Rousseau, Jean-Jaques. The Social Contract and Discourses. Trans. G.D.H. Cole, Rev. J.H. Brumfitt and John C. Hall. London: Guernsey Press, 1973.

Thomas Hobbes, and later John Locke, are philosophers who established philosophical ideals that are the basis for Modern Western Civilization. Rousseau establishes a philosophical basis for Marxism.

The political Left often holds to the view of Rousseau, cited above. They eschew the advancement of science and of the arts. It is no wonder that in their pursuit to dominate academia, that the decline of education in the West has been a victim of the political Left.

5 posted on 04/20/2002 4:03:30 AM PDT by Sir Francis Dashwood
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To: Sir Francis Dashwood
The political Left often holds to the view of Rousseau, cited above.

Excellent post! This is the kind of response that is helpful. Simply calling Rousseau a moron is not. Thank you.
Regards, PsyOp

21 posted on 04/20/2002 11:02:46 AM PDT by PsyOp
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To: Sir Francis Dashwood
Thomas Hobbes, and later John Locke, are philosophers who established philosophical ideals that are the basis for Modern Western Civilization.

You know, that isn't necessarily a good thing.

Locke set the groundwork from which Hume (in an inherently irrational philosophy, IMHO) went on to logically deny the existence of causality, universality, and pretty much everything beyond an extreme version empiricist skepticism. It is out of this extreme skepticism, and inherent to them, that the present day post-modernist left wing wackos emerged - the people who argue for moral relativism, claim that nothing is absolute, and point to "cultural diversity" (as long as its non-western) as an answer for everything and an excuse to do anything.

And then there is Hobbes, the famous 'Monster of Malmsbury,' who completes the picture by giving those same left wing wackos a pass with which they go about enforcing and promoting their wacky socialist post-modernist agendas: might makes right.

68 posted on 05/02/2002 10:53:09 PM PDT by GOPcapitalist
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